Do you know how a watched pot never boils? A similar phenomenon involves weight loss and scales.
Whenever someone finds out you’re losing weight or have lost weight, they inevitably ask “How much weight have you lost?”
We are conditioned to equate progress in efforts to lose weight with a number – pounds lost. But that number is often misleading, a mirage. People want to know, and you feel pressure to provide an answer. Before long, the number attains disproportionate importance, and you start to weigh yourself daily.
The Scale Lies
Losing weight is HARD, and nothing will discourage you faster than constantly weighing yourself and seeing little change – or a gain. The thing is, the scale lies. And if you don’t realize this, you might be tempted to give up and, instead of building new healthy habits, regress to unhealthy ones.
Unless you weight yourself at the same time, under the exact same conditions every time, the number you see might not accurately reflect what’s going on in your body.
Water loss (from sweating during a workout, high humidity, etc.) and water gain (e.g., from increased salt intake) will temporary affect the reading in opposite directions. And thus, the next time you weigh yourself, the two-pound loss you were celebrating shockingly became a three-pound gain overnight – or in mere hours!
Normal Physiological Processes Can Cause Weight Fluctuations
Other changes taking place in your body will affect the scale readings as well. If you gain one pound of muscle and lose one of fat, your weight remains the same even though you’re trending in the right direction. Similarly, a sudden “weight gain” might be due to your body building up its glycogen stores as it adapts to the energy demand of the high-intensity intervals you’ve been doing.
Don’t Panic
Resist the temptation to weigh yourself frequently and ignore anyone pestering you over a meaningless number. Neither helps. Even people within their normal weight range can experience surprising fluctuations. Stick to your plan and weight yourself every 1-4 weeks, looking for trends.
Your body will let you know if you’re progressing.